Is UNIX an open source OS ? Post: 302910075

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Operating Systems Linux Fedora Is UNIX an open source OS ? Post 302910075 by sreyan32 on Tuesday 22nd of July 2014 09:36:54 AM

07-22-2014

Registered User

Is UNIX an open source OS ?

Hi everyone,
I know the following questions are noobish questions but I am asking them because I am confused about the basics of history behind UNIX and LINUX.

Ok onto business, my questions are-:

Was/Is UNIX ever an open source operating system ?
If UNIX was closed source (as Wikipedia states as "historically closed source") then is LINUX a reverse engineered version of UNIX ?
I mean if UNIX was closed source how did Linus Torvalds create a "UNIX-like" OS called LINUX without having access to the source code of a closed source OS. The only possible explanation seems reverse engineering UNIX just like ReactOS is a reversed engineered binary compatible version of Windows.
Now this seems a little odd to ask. Is LINUX actually an OS ? Or is Linux just a kernel ? I am asking this because the Debian OS which I use can work on Linux, FreeBSD and I think the GNU Hurd kernel (I have no idea what it is by the way). Wikipedia defines Linux as an OS while I have never used an OS called Linux but I have used distros like "Fedora", "Debian", etc.

Okay that's about it for now. Please don't flame me, I am really confused between the basics here.

Thanks in advance.

sreyan32

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LEARN ABOUT DEBIAN

dwww

DWWW(1) 							      Debian								   DWWW(1)

NAME

       dwww - access documentation via WWW

SYNOPSIS

       http://localhost/dwww/index.html
       dwww
       dwww program-name | package-name

DESCRIPTION

       A  typical Linux system has documentation in many formats (manual pages, info files, READMEs, and so on).  dwww makes it possible to access
       all of these via the same interface, a WWW browser.  This makes it easier to use the documentation.

       To use dwww, load the URL given in the SYNOPSIS.  If you have a web browser installed, you can also just run the dwww command  which  loads
       the  URL.   If  BROWSER	environment  variable  is  set, dwww uses sensible-browser(1) to load the URL.	Otherwise, dwww first tries to use
       browser specified by DWWW_BROWSER or DWWW_X11_BROWSER configuration variable (cf.  dwww(7)), than will use sensible-browser(1) command.

       If optional argument program-name or package-name is specified, dwww will search all documentation related to given program or package.

ENVIRONMENT

       BROWSER
	      Program used to load the above mentioned URL.

FILES

       /etc/dwww/dwww.conf
	      Configuration file for dwww.

SEE ALSO

       dwww-find(8), dwww(7), sensible-browser(1).

AUTHOR

       Lars Wirzenius <liw@iki.fi>. Modified by Robert Luberda <robert@debian.org>.
       Bugs should be reported via the	Debian Bug Tracking System at <URL:http://bugs.debian.org/>.

       dwww is licensed via the GNU General Public License.  While it has been written for Debian, porting it to other systems is strongly encour-
       aged.

dwww 1.11.1							February 15th, 2009							   DWWW(1)

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